Robert May is a veteran when it comes to film, both as a director and producer. The former President of an industry security firm, May’s credits include nationally recognized films such as “The War Tapes,” “Bonneville,” and the Oscar-winning film “The Fog of War.” As the founder of the production company SenArt Films, his latest achievement may be one of his proudest yet. The shocking documentary “Kids For Cash” exposes the 2009 scandal in Luzerne County, PA, when Judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced over 3,000 kids to jail for petty crimes. Running on the stance of “tough love,” Ciavarella was eventually caught receiving money from the privately owned juvenile detention center where he was sending these kids, raising questions of bribery and fraud. For as petty as the crimes were, for example, creating a fake MySpace page, these kids didn’t stand a chance when up against Ciavarella. It was always the same scenario: jail time. I talk exclusively with Robert May about capturing this scandal, his interviews with the kids affected as well as Ciavarella himself, who did not even tell his lawyer he was participating in the film. We begin:
WHAT WAS THE MOTIVATION FOR MAKING THIS FILM? BECAUSE IT WAS A GOOD STORY, OR TO RAISE AWARENESS OF THE SITUATION?
ROBERT MAY: Certainly not raise awareness of the situation, in fact I don’t like “issue” films. I don’t go to see them… I know there are a lot of issues in the world, but I have enough issues in my own life, you know? Why do I want to take on others? So that wasn’t my intent at all. My producing partner and I were actually developing another story about greed, power and kids. It was a fictional story… and then the scandal broke… and we were like ‘what is this story?’ and literally that’s what started it, this scandal of epic proportions that involved greed, power and kids and millions of dollars and I just thought if there were ever an entertaining concept, there it was right in front of us.
ONCE THIS WHIRLWIND OF “KIDS FOR CASH” IS OVER, ARE YOU GOING TO GO BACK TO THE NARRATIVE?
Yes, we certainly will.
YOU HAD TO BE VERY SECRETIVE WHILE MAKING THIS FILM…
Oh yeah, the idea for the judges was that they’d interview with us but they didn’t want to tell their lawyers… because the lawyers would tell them NO! So the judges didn’t want [the lawyers] to know, we definitely didn’t want them to become part of the story, I mean this is a Federal investigation. There isn’t that many federal investigations people have been documenting behind the scenes. In all of our documents, everything, there was never a trace of their name. The team that we had was “need to know” basis; the research team had no idea we were filming the judges. All of our interviews had transcripts but the transcripts for the judges were done in a whole different place, and it was always “Subject number such-and-such.” Ciavarella was #9 and Conahan was subject #15.
WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST HURDLE MAKING THIS FILM, BUT ALSO THE BIGGEST REWARD?
The biggest hurdle was getting the judges to talk because we wouldn’t have made the movie at all, and it seemed like an impossible idea. In fact, I told my producing partner Lauren Timmons ‘we’re absolutely not doing it if we can’t get the judges.’ It turned out to be much easier than I thought to get them and I thought ‘Holy crap, we have the judges, now we’ve gotta make this movie,’ and I’d say that was the most astonishing thing. So far, the biggest reward is to have people say things that are much bigger than the film, like when [critics] talk about it as a “fiction film” which it isn’t, it’s a non-fiction film. I never intended to make a movie like that but I’m very grateful that it is like that.
WHAT WAS CIAVARELLA LIKE?
Well it’s interesting because everybody loved him! He ran for judge in 1995 on his personality… and was elected for two 10-year terms. He certainly was an arrogant guy, people knew that too, because he was so defined and determined but people like that. He certainly had a personality you could like, and Judge Conahan same thing. Conahan was very smooth and charismatic, manipulative and always tried to keep a few steps ahead of you.
DID YOU FEEL ANY SYMPATHY TOWARDS HIM?
You know, I saw the trauma the kids and families went through and how the kids may never get over what happened to them. The first thing they talk about is shackles and handcuffs, they don’t talk about the scandal. I also saw the trauma the families of the judges went through too, and how their families were destroyed as well. The fact is that Ciavarella destroyed his whole family is an awful thing to see. There are no winners in stories like that.
WAS THERE ONE KID FOR YOU THAT STUCK OUT?
I’ve been affected by all of these stories; I feel like for the rest of my life I’m going to be carrying and concerned about every one of them. It’s hard to shake that. [The kids] have connected with me and I’ve connected with them. In documentaries, after the movie comes out they can’t stay far enough apart, for lots of reasons, or sometimes they get really close, and sometimes I feel like it’s a problem because I have two kids but now I feel like I have five kids, plus the kids that aren’t even in the movie that we filmed, PLUS the kids of the judges. I care for them all. So to say that I care about one over the other… I could tell you how I care about each of them.
FOR THE ENDING SONG, “CREEP” BY SCALA & KOLACNY BROTHERS, HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THAT?
I was familiar with the original song by Radiohead, there was “Sweet Child of Mine” which was one of the songs we thought of also, and I was thinking ‘wouldn’t it be interesting if it was a children’s choir’ and there was. I couldn’t get “Creep” out of my mind… it would just sear into me, but I thought we’d never get the song. Radiohead never plays the song anymore and our music supervisor Season Kent helped us get it and it wasn’t easy. It didn’t cost us a lot of money like we thought it might… but it took six members of Radiohead to sign off on it individually and we thought it was never going to happen.
